Honors Capstone Projects

 

The honors program culminates with students doing a capstone project that pulls together aspects of their majors and minors along with other interests they’ve developed during their time at EMU. These projects are coordinated through the honors department and supervised by the honors director but are guided by professors or other experts in the fields most closely related to the specific capstone project.

Here you will find a sampling of honors capstone projects that span multiple disciplines and take many different forms. They represent the exceptional work done by EMU honors students.

Fall 2019

Anali North Martin, while at an internship in DC, received training on how to be an ally in our power-imbalanced world. Wanting to share that information and explore its complexity, she has gathered what she's learned - and what she has yet to learn - into focused pages of notes to both organize her own thoughts and share them in a semi-educational, semi-narrative form. She will be sharing her process and the resulting work of a semester of gaining new understandings within privilege and marginalization.

Has anyone ever put you in a box or defined you by a stereotype?  What are the emotional consequences from interactions informed by a single story?  This project seeks to explore how we as a society can cultivate and foster connections with those who have just crossed cultures through a case study consisting of interviews with persons who have spent time in Kenya and the United States. 

Exploring the intersection of Christian faith and academics at EMU. Bonus: Tips for students and Teaching Assistants. 

Fall 2017

• Ayu Yifru: "Antioxidants and Their Uses"
• Gabriel Raber: "Using a Soundscape for My Life"
• Kat Lehman: "Microscopic Landscapes: Exploring Science Through a New Lens"
• Samantha Kauffman: "The Effects of High Salt and High Fructose Diets on IL-6 Expression in Sprague Dawley Rats"
• Liesl Graber: "How to Share a Think: An Adventure in Children's Lit, Crayon, and Ink"
• Michaela Mast & Harrison Horst: "Shifting Climates: Designing a Podcast that Reframes the Conversation around Climate Change"
• Kate Weaver: "Engaging with Other Cultures through Literature in an English Classroom"
• Jing Wu: "E-health Literacy of Community-dwelling Older Adults in Urban China"
• Kaitlin Abrahams: "Art Embodied: What Happens When a Writer Paints"

Spring 2017

• Robert Cook: “School Consolidation and Local Government: Discovering Knowledge Through Primary Sources”
• Timothy Martin: “Working within a Framework: Making Something New with Computers”
• Mariah Martin and Lamar Kiser: “Grant Writing for Postpartum Home Visits”
• Aron Harder: “Building Schedules with an Interactive Course Mapper”
• Molly White: “Let’s Watch: Reflections on Playback Theatre and Conflict Transformation”
• Josh Miller: “Computer-generated Music”
• Kaylee Ferguson: “The Effect of Diet on Aldose Reductase Expression in Rat Tissues”
• Madeline Martinez: Make/Dwell: Reflecting Outward
• Hannah Mack-Boll: Between Policy and Practice: Refugee Rights and Entitlements in the MENARegion
• Jacinda Stahly: “‘Are My Ears On Wrong?’: A Lecture Recital on Charles Ives’s Second Violin Sonata”

Fall 2016

• Janaya Sachs: “Explorations into Green Chemistry and Photocatalysis”
• Katie Ommert: “Constructing a Cross Cultural Experience in Turkey”
• Hannah Daley: “Quantifying jNO2 and Characterizing Heterogeneity under Northern Michigan Temperate Forest Canopies”
• Robert Propst: “Challenging Faith: Biological Evolution, God’s Silence, and Evil (a novel in the making)”
• Elisabeth Wilder: “The Little Book of Restorative Justice for Kids: The Generative Power of Tending, Friending, and Mending.”
• Diego Barahona: “Syntheses and Behavioral Evaluations of Analogs of Raspberry Ketone as Attractants for the Melon Fly, Zeugodacuscucurbitae”

Spring 2016

• Alex Bender: “An Evaluation of Cluster 3.0 as a General Tool for Principal Component Analysis”
• Rachel Bowman: “Self Identification in Marginalization: A Precursor to Reclaiming Control Over Implicit Race Associations… PSYCH!”
• Hannah Chappell-Dick: “Life in the ‘Flash’ Lane: Combating Childhood Obesity through Non-Competitive Track & Field”
• Bethany Chupp: “Aging in Art: An Exploration in Abstraction and Mindfulness”
• Amanda Helfrich: “Adventure is Out There! But where? The Importance of Outdoor Recreation and Where to Find It”
• Brooke Lacock: “ANOTHER: Seeing One Another as More than an Other”
• Erin Nafziger: “Not Just Another Statistic”
• Jessie Reist: “A Cost-Benefit Analysis of Operating an Electric Vehicle at EMU”
• Lauren Sauder: “Living Tiny: Designing Today’s Housing with Tomorrow in Mind”
• Sarah Sutter: “Origins: A Biologically, Musically and Spiritually Inspired Composition”

Fall 2015

• Kate Harrold: “Creating Community Connections: A course proposal and analysis of IEP student views of EMU”
• Dominike Hoefle: “The Kachin People: A Struggle for Independence”
• Alicia Poplett: “A Capacity Building Curriculum for Camp CONECT”
• Ryan Swartzendruber: “The Economics Behind Netflix’s House of Cards”

Spring 2015

• Jonathan Drescher-Lehman: “Photography of Six Virginian Salamanders”
• Carissa Harnish
• Karla Hovde
• Becca Longenecker
• Ben Mast
• Brad Mullet
• Seth Stauffer
• Lydia Stutzman

Fall 2014

• Daniel Friesen: “An Exploration in Morality, Consciousness, and Neurotheology”
• Charlie Good: “Green Chemistry at EMU: A Look at the Numbers”
• James Helmuth: “The Plight of Japanese American Farmers: How Economic Success Fueled the Racism that Led to Their Demise”
• Mattie Lehman: “1968 Columbia Student Protest: The Untold Stories of Summer Vacation”
• Becca Martin: “Eine Liebesgeschichte im Wandel der Zeit.”
• Thomas Millary: “Why I Believe in God(s): Theology in a World of Becoming”
• Emilie Raber: “The Eradication of the Haitian Pig: A Case Study in American Intervention”
• Jason Spicher: “Fermentation Analysis of Captured Local Yeast Strains”

Spring 2014:

• Randi Hagi: “Bound: An Arts & Writing Coming-Out Mini-Comic”

Fall 2013

• Zach Zook: “Survey and Analysis of Nutrition Interventions”